A survey of more than 1,200 heterosexual U.S. adults found that men too easily sacrifice their own attractiveness for a highly attractive partner. Women do exactly the opposite.
Across six traits — wealth, beauty, ambition, humor, intelligence and kindness — a survey carried out on the sidelines of a study recently in Evolution and Human Behaviorparticipants were asked whether they would prefer to have the trait or for their partner to have it, and to indicate how big the difference between themselves and their partner could be.
As , unlike previous similar studies, researchers forced participants to express a preference in one direction or another.
The team found that the sexes diverged more strongly in appearance physics and were more aligned in kindness — that is, men and women wanted to date someone with similar levels of kindness to their own.
In general, women tended to want to be attractive and intelligent and to date men who were richer, funnier, and more ambitious than they were; while men mainly wanted to be rich and date women who were more beautiful than them.
For example, on average, women rated their desire for beauty for themselves at 7.01 out of 11, while men rated the importance of their own beauty at 4.77. On the other hand, men’s desire to be funny was 7.08, while women’s was 5.81.
To New Scientist, Steve Stewart-Williams, from the University of Nottingham in Semenyih, Malaysia, who was not part of the investigation, says that, in general, the results are not surprising, but that force people to choose may have made your true feelings more evident.
Stewart-Williams also believes that the study can show the marks of evolution in a modern population.
